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Persona Data Model 2.0

Revision as of 16:22, 22 May 2010 by Ptrevithick.gmail.com (Talk | contribs) (hasAgent)

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This data model is based on Higgins Data Model 2.0. It used by Personal Data Store 2.0 (i.e. Attribute Service 2.0 and IdAS Proxy Service 2.0) and will likely be used by future Higgins web services (e.g. future versions of I-Card Service 2.0).

Introduction

The Persona Data Model 2.0 is a model a person's (the user's) personal information. It is based on the Higgins Data Model 2.0 which is in turn based on Context Data Model 2.0.

Restrictions on CDM 2.0 EntityIds

The PDM 2.0 uses a restricted set of the full capabilities of CDM 2.0. The restriction is in the area of EntityIds. PDM 2.0 adds the following constraints:

  1. All entityIds MUST be URIs
  2. All entityId values MUST be Linked Data URIs or XRI 3.0 URIs as we expect XRI 3.0 to be defined
  3. All entityIds within a given context MUST be either (a) relative to a "base" URI of the context or (b) absolute
  4. Whether or not an entityID is relative or absolute MUST be able to be determined by inspection of its syntax
  5. Absolute entityIds MAY be globally resolvable
  6. Globally resolvable entityIds resolve to an entity (resource description) within exactly one context

The Persona graph

The user's data is represented as a directed acyclic graph of Persona class Entity nodes (vertices) interconnected by h:correlation links (edges). Each node represents a different facet of the user. Each node is an entity (i.e. a set of attributes & values). These attributes may be simple literals (e.g. the user's first name) or they may be other entities. These latter complex attributes are rendered a as links (edges) to other nodes, but these edges and nodes are not considered part of the persona graph.

As defined in the Higgins Data Model 2.0 h:correlation link is statement made by some human observer that the source and target of this link are believed to be alternative representations of the same real world person or object. A single, natural person would be represented by different nodes in different contexts. This linkage does not presume that the entire set of attributes across these nodes, if they were brought together and combined, is necessarily logically consistent. The ontologies in the two contexts may be such that each of the two representations cannot be merged and remain logically consistent. For this reason higgins does not use owl:sameAs which does imply this ability to directly merge representations. Lastly, the entity source (domain) of the h:correlation relation is often within a more privacy-privileged context than the target (range) of the link. Thus the directed nature of the link is important.

The Persona graph is a logical abstraction. The data behind these nodes may be physically located anywhere on the Internet.

Typically each node in the persona graph is located in its own Context. The root node lies in a special context (for each user) called the meta context.

An example graph (showing only h:correlation links) is shown below. Many details in this diagram will be explained further on:

Context instances 2.0.106.png

Persona Context Subclass

Five of the contexts shown in a gray tint above are of class Persona a subclass of Context. This indicates that the Persona entity within them is intended for use across multiple interaction contexts. Specifically, attributes of these Personas are sometimes copied into other contexts (especially non-Persona contexts). This is by contrasted to the non-gray contexts which are directly used in exactly one interaction context with the user.

Schemas

In the above example all of the context except one express their contents using the Persona data model (shown as red "P"s above). The exception is the managed i-card from Equifax which uses attribute (aka claim) URIs defined by the OASIS IMI TC and by the ICF's (Information Card Foundation) schema working group.

Social Graphs

PDM defines a p:knows complex (link) attribute on Persona node that may or may not represent the user and whose value is another Persona node that does not represent the user. Shown below are two social graph examples. In the Work context we see that the user knows three colleagues but doesn't know how they know one another. In the Home & Friends context we see that the user knows three people and that two of these are mutually known to one another (shown as bi-directionally linked p:knows links) and another pair includes a uni-directional p:knows link.

Nodes that represent the user are shown in purple. Nodes that represent a person other than the user are shown in red.

Social graph 2.0.100.png

Imported Ontologies

The PDM 2.0 is defined by these ontologies:

  • persona - defined by Higgins
  • r-card - defined by Higgins
  • i-card - defined by Higgins

And builds on these ontologies:

As shown visually here:

Persona-imports3.png

Errata:

  • r-card ontology is missing from the above

Where:

  • "p" == Persona Data Model 2.0 (persona.owl, rcard.owl, icard.owl)
  • "h" == Higgins Data Model 2.0 (higgins.owl)
  • "v" or "vcard" == vCard
  • "geo" == WGS84
  • "foaf" == FOAF

vCard

PDM is based on the W3C's representation of vCard RDF with a few modifications.

In general Persona nodes can be thought of as VCard instances. However PDM imposes the following additional constraints on the structure of a Persona. Instances have:

  • 0..1 v:n
  • 0..1 v:adr
  • 0..1 v:org

We have defined a sub-class of Persona called Contactable that adds the following constraints. Instances have:

  • 1..1 v:n
  • 1..1 v:addr

The following attributes are not used:

  • v:category
  • v:class
  • v:fn
  • v:agent - we use hasAgent instead
  • v:geo - we use geo:location instead
  • v:key
  • v:mailer - not sure what this is
  • v:photo - we use foaf:thumbnail instead
  • v:prodid
  • v:rev
  • v:sort-string
  • v:sound
  • v:tz - not sure syntax of range/value
  • v:uid - we use entityId instead
  • v:url - we use foaf:page (and sub-attributes) instead

Use of vCard classes:

  • v:Label (disjoint with v:Tel) - not used (don't yet understand what it is)
  • v:Tel rdf:value is a Telephone URI instead of a string

FOAF

Attributes used:

  • foaf:gender
  • foaf:thumbnail
  • foaf:page
    • foaf: homepage
    • foaf: weblog

WSG84

Attributes used:

Classes used:

Persona Ontology

UML Class Diagram

The following diagram has been updated to align with persona.owl version 2.0.101. The grayed out classes are from ontologies other than persona.owl:

PDM-UML-class-diagram 2.0.101c.png

Classes

Account

Account identifier; may also contain credentials. Used for authentication.

  • 0..1 p:password
  • 1..1 p:username

Contactable

A Persona that can be reached either for payment or for receipt of a letter or bill. Subclass of Persona

  • 1..1 vcard:n
  • 1..1 vcard:adr
  • 0..1 receivableAdr
  • 0..1 vcard:org

PaymentMethod

Method of payment including credit cards, paypal, etc.

Persona

A contextualized aspect of a person.

  • 0..1 account
  • 0..1 daytimePhone
  • 0..1 neverRememberPassword
  • 0..1 v:bday
  • 0..1 foaf:gender

Usually has one or more of the following attributes (some of which are sub-Attributes of h:correlation) whose values are instances of class Contactable:

  • billing
  • home
  • receiving
  • receivingHome
  • work

PaymentMethod subclasses

ByBankTransferInAdvance

Cash

CheckinAdvance

COD

CreditCard

  • 1..1 ccCid
  • 1..1 ccExpiration
  • 1..1 ccNumber

DirectDebit

PayPal

CreditCard subclasses

AMEX

DinersClub

Discover

MasterCard

VISA

DataRanges

  • telephoneURI: a telephone number in tel: URI syntax

Simple Attributes

ccCid

  • class: CreditCard
  • value: xsd:string

ccExpiration

  • class: CreditCard
  • value: xsd:date

ccNumber

  • class: CreditCard
  • value: xsd:string

eyeColor

  • class: Persona
  • value: xsd:string oneOf(green, blue, brown)

neverRememberPassword

  • class: Persona
  • value: xsd:boolean

password

  • class: p:Account
  • value: xsd:string

username

  • class: p:Account
  • value: xsd:string

Complex Attributes

account

Account information required for authentication. value: Account

billing

Billing persona. A persona capable of receiving and paying bills.

  • value: Contactable

knows

A person known by this person (indicating some level of reciprocated interaction between the parties).

  • value: Persona

hasAgent

A person other than the user to whom some authority to act on the user's behalf has been delegated.

  • value: Contactable

paymentMethod

Payment method.

  • value: PaymentMethod)

receiving

The receiving party (p:Persona) may or may not be you.

  • value: Contactable

receivingHome

The receiving party (p:Persona) is the user and the node value is one of the user's homes.

  • subAttributeOf: p:home
  • subAttributeOf: p:receiving

Contexts

Issuer Attribute

In the Higgins Data Model 2.0 all Context attributes are optional. However in the Persona Data Model 2.0 we have this requirement:

  • All contexts that are made available by a third party (e.g. the government, a bank, etc.) MUST have a p:issuer attribute
  • The attribute value is a URI
  • The URI is either the domain name that is the authority behind the attribute assertions or
  • The value http://!self - the user has explicitly asserted entities & attributes in this context
  • The value http://!derived - the active client has derived entities & attributes in this context based on observed behavior and/or assertions made by the user in other contexts

Concept Scheme

The attributes defined in the PDM have attribute annotations that specify where the attribute lies within the following concept scheme:

Conceptsv5.png

Which is represented as:

Persona-concept-hierarchy.png

Note: see Higgins Data Model 1.1 for more information on concept schemes.

Proposed Extensions

Use Cases

I-Card Ontology (icard.owl)

Information Card (aka i-card) technology is defined by the OASIS IMI TC. It is a standard way to represent a person's digital identities using a card metaphor, XML card formats, and associated SOAP and HTTP network protocols. See also I-Card.

Before we introduce the I-Card classes, remember that in CDM multiple inheritance is allowed: any single entity may be a member of multiple classes simultaneously. In this section we leverage this characteristic.

First we define an abstract class called I-Card that is a subclass of h:Context. This captures the common attributes across the sub-classes defined below. These common attributes include:

  • cardId (xsd:string) - a unique identifier for the card
  • image - an image bitmap for the background of the card when it is displayed
  • ... and many others.

These two sub-classes of I-Card are defined:

  • P-Card - an OASIS IMI Personal card
  • M-Card - an OASIS IMI Managed card

And lastly by adding a special resource-udr attribute either of the above can become an R-Card. The following classes are inferred by the presence of this attribute on their respective base classes:

  • Personal relationship card (aka r-card)
  • Managed r-card

P-Card

The attributes that define a personal card are taken directly from the OASIS IMI specification. An example p-card is shown here:

Personal-i-card-example.png

M-Card

An IMI managed card is represented by the M-Card class, a sub-class of the Context class.

Shown below is an example of an instance of an m-card. For simplicity this m-card has only a single supported claim, "LastName". The entity shown in the center of the card is a cache of what is returned by the STS in response to a request for a display token.

M-card-explained.png

Note: There is an error in the above diagram the DisplayTokenEntity should have been modeled in the Persona data model (thus identity:surname would have been transformed into its equivalent in PDM.

Personal R-Card

From a structural point of view, the presence of the resource-udr claim on a P-Card or an M-Card makes it be considered an R-Card. Here is an example of a personal R-Card:

Example-r-pcard-v2.png

ERRATA: the above image is incorrect for PDM 2.0. As above the card is a context. The entity (in this case referenced by the value of the resource_udr claim) would be a free standing Persona entity (as above) and described in the PDM 1.1 model.

Managed R-Card

The final type of card is the managed r-card. The presence of the resource-udr claim makes an ordinary M-Card into an R-Card. Here is an example of a managed R-Card:

Managed-r-card.png

ERRATA: The image above needs to be replaced.

More about R-Cards

For more details about R-Cards see R-Card.

Card Axioms

  1. For any M-Card: The value of any of the above "supported" claims attributes is considered to be a cache of the most recent value of these claims as fetched from the m-card's STS

See Also

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